The North District was screaming. Even from the rusted vents of the harbor tunnels, I could feel the cold, heavy weight of Julian's shadow-storm. He had done it. The sky over the city was an impenetrable veil of midnight, blinding the Board's orbital eyes.
But here at the harbor, the air was dead.
"Null-Field active," Lyra whispered into her comms. She looked at me, her prosthetic arm lifeless and dull, the blue glow extinguished. "How do you feel?"
"Like I'm made of lead," I muttered.
The fire in my blood hadn't vanished, but the Null-Field had turned it into a cold, heavy lump in my chest. I felt human—dangerously, terrifyingly human. No sparks, no heat, just a woman in a heavy vest carrying ten pounds of C4 explosive.
In front of us sat the first Siphon. It looked like a giant, pulsing needle driven into the heart of the pier, drawing golden liquid energy from the water and pumping it into a massive overhead conduit. It was guarded by twenty Board Enforcers, their armor shimmering with kinetic dampeners.
"They have the tech, we have the grit," Lyra said, checking the action on her mechanical rifle. "We split into two teams. My crew draws their fire toward the tankers. You and the explosives go straight for the cooling vents at the base."
"One shot," I reminded myself, my fingers brushing the trigger of the detonator.
"Go!"
Lyra's team erupted from the shadows of the shipping containers. The air filled with the sharp *crack* of traditional gunpowder—a sound so primitive in this world of energy weapons that the Enforcers seemed momentarily stunned.
I didn't watch the carnage. I ran.
My boots thudded against the wet wood of the pier. Without my speed or flames, the distance felt like miles. A guard turned, his silver visor reflecting my desperate sprint. He raised a kinetic baton, but even without power, he was faster than me
.
He swung. I dived behind a stack of steel pipes, the baton shattering the concrete where my head had been a second ago.
"Elara, move!" Lyra's voice crackled. She was pinned behind a forklift, her prosthetic arm being used as a literal shield against a hail of kinetic slugs.
I scrambled up, ignored the scrape of the metal against my ribs, and lunged for the guard's knees. We hit the ground hard. I wasn't a fighter, but I was angry. I slammed my elbow into his visor and grabbed a heavy wrench from my belt, smashing it into the side of his helmet until he stopped moving.
I was breathing hard, my lungs burning. *No fire. Just muscle.*
I reached the base of the Siphon. The hum was deafening, a low-frequency vibration that made my teeth ache. I found the cooling vent—a heavy grate hissed with steam. I began planting the charges, my hands shaking as I wired the C4 to the main intake.
"Charges set," I whispered into the comms.
"Get out of there!" Lyra screamed.
I turned to run, but the air suddenly turned thick. The Null-Field didn't just stop magic; it was beginning to condense. A figure stepped out from the steam at the top of the Siphon.
It wasn't a guard. It was an Inquisitor—a high-ranking Board official whose body had been almost entirely replaced by kinetic machinery. He didn't need the Null-Field to stop; he was the Field.
"The Valerius brat," the Inquisitor droned, his voice coming from a speaker in his chest. "Your father's genius, wasted on a girl who fights with tools."
He raised a heavy, mechanical hand. The air pressure around me surged, pinning me against the vibrating metal of the Siphon. I couldn't breathe. My ribs groaned under the weight.
"The Director wants your head," he said, stepping closer. "But I think I'll just take the Source in your blood first."
He reached for my throat.
In that moment, I realized the thermal-dampener vest wasn't just a cloak. It was a dam. And dams were meant to be broken.
"You want my blood?" I choked out, my hand reaching for the release valve on my chest. "Then take the fever that comes with it."
I ripped the vest open.
The Null-Field screamed as it tried to suppress the sudden, violent surge of my core. For a second, the heat didn't go out—it turned inward. I felt my own skin begin to char, the pain absolute. But I pushed. I pushed every ounce of my will into the fire, forcing it to ignite even in the dead zone.
*BOOM.*
A small, concentrated spike of white flame erupted from my chest. It wasn't enough to destroy the Siphon, but it was enough to melt the Inquisitor's mechanical hand to a stump.
He shrieked, the feedback from the Null-Field causing his internal systems to spark.
I dropped to the floor, grabbed the detonator, and rolled off the pier into the freezing harbor water.
*CLICK.*
The C4 ignited.
The base of the Siphon vanished in a roar of orange flame and twisted steel. The golden liquid energy, suddenly without a path, surged backward. The entire pier groaned as the Siphon tilted, then collapsed into the sea in a spectacular secondary explosion that lit up the dark harbor like a second sun.
The Null-Field shattered.
I bobbed in the water, my skin sizzling as the cold ocean met my feverish body. Above me, the violet sky flickered. One of the red dots on the map was gone.
But as I climbed onto a floating piece of debris, I saw the North District. The shadow-storm was fading.
"Julian..." I whispered.
The darkness was retreating too fast. That meant Julian had either finished his mission, or he had run out of strength.
A secondary fleet of Board ships was already screaming toward the harbor, their spotlights cutting through the smoke.
"Elara! To the boat!" Lyra's voice was faint but alive. A small, fast skiff moved through the wreckage toward me.
I looked at the burning Siphon, then toward the dark towers of the city. We had won the first round, but the cost was etched in the black smoke rising from the North.
"We're not going back to the lab," I said as Lyra pulled me onto the boat.
"What? We have to regroup!"
"No," I said, the fire in my eyes returning, colder and sharper than before. "Julian is trapped. And I'm going to go get my partner."